


Wolfswood

by Goodforthesoul



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Accidental Beauty and the Beast Vibes, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Bathing/Washing, F/M, Jon Snow Comes Back Wrong, Light Smut, Sansa and Jon Think They Are Related, Werewolves (kinda)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-17
Updated: 2018-12-17
Packaged: 2019-09-20 16:20:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,761
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17026026
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Goodforthesoul/pseuds/Goodforthesoul
Summary: “He is in the wood again?” Sansa says. It is half a question, the other half heavy with concern and resignation. He has been absent for two days and no one seems to know exactly where their king has gone.“Aye,” Davos replies.“How long this time?” He has done this before. Disappeared. Returning without explanation. At the Wall, the wildings and the Black Brothers had done their best to cover for him. Now that they have retaken Winterfell, she is the one attempting to deflect the questions of concerned Lords who want to know where the man they have crowned their king has gone.“There’s no telling. Sometimes he is fine in a day or two. Sometimes it’s a bit longer. But he’ll be back. He always comes back. You can count on that.”“I know,” she says softly. Because if there is one thing she is certain of, it is that she can count on Jon.





	Wolfswood

“He is in the wood again?” Sansa says. It is half a question, the other half heavy with concern and resignation. He has been absent for two days and no one seems to know exactly where their king has gone. 

“Aye,” Davos replies. 

“How long this time?” He has done this before. Disappeared. Returning without explanation. At the Wall, the wildings and the Black Brothers had done their best to cover for him. Now that they have retaken Winterfell, she is the one attempting to deflect the questions of concerned Lords who want to know where the man they have crowned their king has gone. 

“There’s no telling. Sometimes he is fine in a day or two. Sometimes it’s a bit longer. But he’ll be back. He always comes back. You can count on that.” 

“I know,” she says softly. Because if there is one thing she is certain of, it is that she can count on Jon. 

***

She pulls her fur lined cloak tighter around her as she slips into the woods. It has been seven days and Jon is still gone and the Lord’s grumblings have grown louder and there are whispers of giving the North to her and Davos’ reassurances have begun to feel hollow, empty of the halls of Winterfell without her brother. Without Jon. 

The sun is just beginning to peak over the horizon. It is a winter sun, pale and weak, barely able to dispel the bluish tinge of night from the blanket of snow, barely brighter than the moon that still hangs full and heavy over the wood. She had to leave early, before the sun rose, before she would be missed. Brienne and Davos would never let her wander into the Wolfswood, even with protection. It is too dangerous. The wolves are too hungry and there are hungry men as well. They have forgotten that she is a wolf, too, and that she isn’t wandering. She is searching for Jon, who is somewhere in this wood, and who has promised to protect her. 

***

She isn’t sure how she finds him. The Wolfswood is great and untamed. It sprawls across the North, creeping up to towns and holdfasts. But somehow, she knows where to find him beneath the leaveless ash and naked ironwoods and bristling firs, as though his blood is calling to her. They are a pack. She was always going to find him. 

When she sees him, she is unprepared for his wildness. He is thinner, cheek bones sharp and face hollow, and his hair has fallen loose from its leather binding and is tangled and matted. There is blood and dirt caked into his beard, which has grown longer and straggly during the week that he has been roaming the wood. Stalking, she realizes, hunting. And she looks into his eyes and searches for the man she knows is in there, but all she can see is the wolf. 

She had seen his eyes like this once before. After the battle for Winterfell. In the courtyard of the home they had just won back, where he was beating Ramsay to death. There was a rage, fierce and feral, to his look then and she had been certain that he was going to kill bastard Bolton. That he wasn’t going to stop until Ramsay’s life, like so much blood, was splattered and spilled across the stones of the castle he had stolen from them and in that moment, she had known that Jon was dangerous enough to protect her. He had looked up and seen her and he had come back to himself and had given her the kill, had let her protect herself. 

And now she is looking at him and he is looking at her, but she doesn’t see the man, only the predatory fierceness of the wilds. 

***

“What happened to him?” Sansa asks Davos on the fourth night, while they both pretended to sup. Each too concerned about Jon to stomach food, but determined to pick at their plates to avoid worrying the other more. 

“Did he not tell you?” 

“He told me enough. About the scars he now bears from men who were supposed to be his Brothers. About the Red Woman who brought him back. He didn’t tell me about what happened in between.” 

“I don’t think he’s told anyone that.” 

“But you have your suspicions?” 

“Aye.” 

“Well, what are they?”

“I’m not sure I should say, my lady.” 

“And I pray you speak, Ser,” Sansa says with a small smile. If it is courtesies he wants to play against her, she will outmatch him. She’s learned to play this game in order to stay alive. It is second nature and survival to her. 

Davos sighs. “He’s been odd since, well, since he came back. Not always. Most of the time he is the man I’ve come to respect, who I’ve been honored to serve.” 

“And the other times?”

“He’s different.”

“Different how, Davos?” 

“I’m not sure I have the words to rightly say. But it’s like he isn’t a man anymore.” 

“What is he?” 

“A wolf.” The words hang in the air. “Or some other sort of beast.”

“No,” Sansa says. “If Jon were a beast, he’d be a wolf. Nothing else would do for a Stark.” 

“I suppose you’re right, my lady.”

“And you think this has to do with what happened to him? With what those men did to him?” Her words are sharper than she intends, and Davos looks at her sympathetically. 

“I’ve heard the wildings talk about skinchangers, wargs, men and women who can enter the bodies of animals, take control of them. There’s a bond between man and beast. Closer than should be by rights.” 

“Like Jon and Ghost.” 

Davos nods. “There is something still in the old blood of the North, the blood of the First Men. It’s been diluted, weakened, in the south, but it is still runs strong here.” 

“You think that Jon went into Ghost after he died. Walked with him before he came back.” 

“I do.” 

“How long was he gone for?”

Davos shuddered. “Longer than any of us would have liked. Three days.” 

“And he lived that time as a wolf. In his wolf.” 

“That, on top of everything else he’s been through, it will change a man.” 

***

“Jon,” Sansa says his name quietly. His eyes are still on her, but they don’t contain any of the warmth that she’s come to associate with him. They are wolf-eyes, cold and blank and dangerous. “Jon,” she says again as she takes a step forward, a step closer to him. 

He doesn’t take his eyes from her, so he doesn’t see the wolf emerge from behind him. It’s not Ghost; its smaller than Ghost, a muddy grey, and its fangs are bared. But Sansa sees it, and she says his name again, more urgency in her voice, but he continues to stare at her and doesn’t seem to understand. 

She wonders where Ghost is. He is almost never from Jon’s side and a single, starving wolf would pose no problem to him. But she can’t see him and the wolf is scenting her, its pink tongue lolling out of its mouth, and Jon eyes are fixed on her, hard and wolfish and predatory. 

“Jon,” she cries out this time and the wolf begins run at them, its hot breath clouding in the cold evening air. 

She is not sure if Jon hears her cries or the wolf’s paws crunching on the snow or its panting breath, but he turns to face it, runs toward it, intercepting it before the creature is even close to reaching her. He leaps at it and they go down in a tumble of fur and leather and skin and as Sansa watches Jon wrestle with the beast, sprays of snow mixing with fur and blood, she realizes that he doesn’t have a weapon. She sees the wolf bite his forearm, but somehow Jon pries free. They grapple some more. She hears growls and is unsure whether they are from man or beast. Wolf is on top. Then Jon. And then she her a whimper and then the crack of bones and then nothing but the silence of the wood. 

It’s then that Sansa sees the three other wolves, their yellow eyes trained on her. But they turn and lope away and Sansa feels Ghost’s nose against her neck, his hot breath, his reassurance. 

She reaches up and pats the direwolf. “I need to go to him,” she says. “I need to bring him home. He can’t stay out here in the woods.” And she is sure that Ghost nudges her forward. 

She walks to where Jon is still lying in the snow, praying to the Warrior and the Old Gods of the wood and any god that will listen that he is alive, that he will mend, that he will survive. Because if Jon--her family, her protector, her hope--dies, she doesn’t think she’ll be alive for long. 

His eyes are closed and for a moment her stomach plunges and the wood closes in and she is afraid to take a step closer to him for fear of what it might confirm. But he is alive. Bruised and beaten and scrapped up, his breathing ragged, but alive. 

“Jon,” she says softly, and he opens his eyes and they are still feral and fierce. But she needs to get him home, so reaches out and puts a hand gentle on his shoulder, murmuring his name, calling him back to her. At her touch, he looks momentarily confused, and then the wildness melts away from his face and he breaths her name before drifting back into unconsciousness.

***

Brienne meets them where the King’s Road brushes up against the wildness of the wood. She has horses that whinny and knicker and fuss and Sansa is unsure whether it is Jon or Ghost who is upsetting them. Brienne helps her secure Jon to one of the horse’s backs, before assisting Sansa as she mounts the other. 

“What were you thinking, my lady?” she scolds. 

“I had to find Jon,” Sansa answers simply. 

“These woods are vast, Lady Sansa. You could have been lost or worst.” 

“I had to find him,” she repeats. 

“You could have hundreds of sworn men at your disposal. You did not have to go yourself.” 

“Yes. I did. I couldn’t let the men see him like this. He is their king.” She looks at Jon, who looks so small and broken and something in her breaks as well. The North remembers the perils of mad kings, she cannot let them know that the man they had crowned has a beast inside him. 

“I understand, my lady,” Brienne nods, but Sansa can tell that she is not satisfied. It is not Brienne’s fault. She had sworn an oath to protect Catelyn Stark’s surviving daughter and Sansa is not making that duty easy for the knight. 

***

Sansa finishes brushing out the last of Jon’s curls. It was the hour of ghosts by the time they reached the castle and they were able to slip in mostly unseen. A few sharp words from Sansa silenced the men on watch, who were relieved to see their Lady and their King return alive and were ready to sign the alarm. But Sansa told them that both she and Jon were exhausted by their ordeals and wanted to quietly retire. Tomorrow the castle could celebrate the return of its king. 

After they had gotten Jon to his rooms, Sansa asked Brienne to fetch some hot water. “Would you like me to send a serving girl to bath him?” 

“No. I’ll care for him myself.” She was bone-tired, aching from dragging Jon through the wood. But it had to be her. She couldn’t risk others seeing Jon like this. 

Davos arrived shortly after Brienne had left for water. 

“He doesn’t look well,” he observed. 

“He’ll be better in the morning. We’ll need a cover, a story,” Sansa said. “The Lords can’t know that Jon was stalking through the Wolfswood all this time.”

“I’ll think of something, my lady. We’ll shield him best we can.” And he took his leave. 

She had felt the blood rush to her cheeks as she removed his small clothes, took in his naked body, lean and muscular and scarred. He was both so strong and so fragile. She bathed him, washing the dirt from his body, the blood from his beard, brushed the tangles from his hair. He was scratched and bruised and so thin, but that seemed to be the extent of the damage, his leathers protecting him from the wolves and the wilds of the wood. 

She was soaping his chest when she heard him whisper her name. She looked up and his eyes were open and he was looking at her with love and warmth and it was her Jon again and she knew that everything would be alright, that they would survive this too.  
“Oh, Jon.” And she smiles as tears prick at her eye as she moves to his side. “I was so worried.” 

“Thank you,” he says softly. “Sansa, thank you for bringing me back.” He reaches up for her, gently cups the back of her head, pulls her closer, brushes his lips against her forehead.

“Of course. This is your home. You belong in Winterfell,” she murmurs. 

He shakes his head slightly, pressing his forehead to hers. “That’s not what I meant.” 

His look is so intense and she realizes how close they are, how close their lips are, and she is not sure if she moves or if he does or they are drawn together by some force or magic, but then Jon is kissing her and she is kissing him back. 

She knows it is wrong. They share a father, if not a mother, but she doesn’t stop. She has never been kissed by a man like this, with this kind of sweet hunger then melts her heart and pools its throbbing warmth between her legs. 

“Jon,” she moans, as he pulls them to their feet, not breaking the kiss. She hears the splashing and dripping as he leaves the blood and dirt of the wood behind and she threads her fingers through the hair that she had washed and combed. His body as pressed against her, wet and warm from the bath, and she can feel his manhood, hard, against her. He wants her and his wanting fuels hers. 

He breaks the kiss to look at her. “Sansa,” he says, and her name is a question.

“Yes, Jon,” she nods and he drops his hand to her breast, rubbing the nipple through the fabric of her dress. She has never been touched by a man like this, and she arches her back to meet his hand. She needs his hands on her and she unties the laces of her dress and lets it fall, her shift after it, and she is as naked as he. 

She knows it is wrong. She knows she should be embarrassed to be like this with her brother. For him to see her scars, but he is scarred too and in this moment it does not matter. He sucks on her breasts, she bites his neck, he tongues her sex, and then they are kissing again, and making their way to the bed and when he looks at her his eyes are wild and feral, but this time it is with heat and longing and desire, not the cold of the forest, and she knows that when she returns his look he sees the same in hers. After all, she is a wolf too, and when he enters her, with a growl or groan, the two sounds blended together, she howls in response. She has never had a man inside her like this, filling her, pleasuring her. They twist and thrust and nip and kiss until he spills his seed inside of her.

Afterward, they lay beside each other, loose limbed and panting. 

“Jon,” she says, breaking the soft silence that has settled over them. 

“Sansa,” he reaches toward her to brush her cheek. “Thank you.” 

He doesn’t say more but she is certain she understands. She has met the wolf inside of him and she hasn’t looked away. By day, together they will tame the beast so that Jon can be the man, the king, to lead the North, but by night, together they will be wolves.


End file.
